[meteorite-list] Mission Operations Awaiting Contact from CONTOUR Spacecraft

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:14 2004
Message-ID: <200208151559.IAA16015_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.contour2002.org/news.php?id=17

Mission Operations Awaiting Contact from CONTOUR Spacecraft
August 15, 2002
09:15 AM EDT

Mission operators are looking for a signal from CONTOUR, more than
four hours after a scheduled maneuver to send the spacecraft from
Earth's orbit onto a path to encounter multiple comets.

CONTOUR's STAR 30 solid-propellant rocket motor was programmed to
ignite at 4:49 a.m. EDT and deliver 1,920 meter-per-second boost
which CONTOUR needed to escape Earth's orbit. At about 140 miles
(225 kilometers) above the Indian Ocean, the spacecraft was too low
for NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas to track it at the
scheduled time of the burn.

The CONTOUR mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory expected to regain contact at approximately
5:35 a.m. EDT to confirm the burn, but by 9 a.m. EDT the DSN had not
acquired a signal.

The mission operations team is working through several backup plans
to establish contact with the spacecraft, searching along the predicted
trajectories for a successful burn.

CONTOUR, a Discovery-class mission to explore the nucleus of comets, was
built and managed by the John Hopkins Laboratory Applied Physics
Laboratory, Laurel, Md., for NASA.
Received on Thu 15 Aug 2002 11:59:45 AM PDT